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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: ...in middle life. To be sure, progress then is slow, and, when you are grown up, it will take months to do what you can now do simply with a little attention to the position assumed at work and... More

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: ...in middle life. To be sure, progress then is slow, and, when you are grown up, it will take months to do what you can now do simply with a little attention to the position assumed at work and at play. The child's body is pliable and tends to mold itself to the shape which it habitually takes. It seems to us a serious matter when a man has to have a broken leg set in the woods, far away from a physician, and then finds that because it was set wrong it has grown permanently crooked. Yet in a small way we are doing a similar thing to ourselves when we continually set some group of muscles wrong; we are helping to make for them a habit of action or inaction that cannot later be broken without much effort and difficulty. Unused muscles become small and weak. If we get the habit of relaxing our muscles and sitting back into a comfortable easy-chair, we are weakening the muscles that hold our backs upright; they will lose their vigor, and what ought to be a natural position for us will become difficult and uncomfortable. Leaning is another foolish habit; leaning against a chair or a counter or whatever support may be at hand does not really rest us. One tires quickly if one has to stand still, for standing keeps the same muscles contracted for a long time, while when one is moving about different muscles are at work. The way to rest, if one has to stand for any length of time, is to put the weight first on one foot and then on the other. The muscles are well satisfied with that kind of rest, especially if the weight is kept forward on the arch of the foot and the feet are either placed straight frontwards, or with the toes turning slightly inwards. Flat chests are most unattractive, particularly in women; yet all girls, when they are young, may easily acquire a we...

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